Errand boy .
My name is letitia James and my master Kathy Hochul
Said stomp on the Easter Sunday of the Greek Orthodox cashier of Nassau otb
Can Prosecutors Refuse to Enforce the Law?
It’s complicated. The answer varies from state to state and may affect the response to rising crime rates.
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr. has a policy that unless the defendant committed other crimes too, his office “will not prosecute” marijuana misdemeanors, subway turnstile jumping, some trespassing, driving without a license and resisting arrest for any offense subject to the nonprosecution policy. Other self-styled progressive prosecutors across the country have adopted similar policies.
Critics argue that such policies are improper—that prosecutors have no authority to nullify the effect of duly enacted criminal laws. But whether that’s true as a matter of law depends on the state.
Some states forbid blanket nonenforcement by local prosecutors. In Massachusetts and North Carolina, constitutional provisions forbid anyone but the legislature from “suspending” the “execution” of the laws.
California places specific duties on statewide officials to override local disregard for state law. The California Constitution obligates the state attorney general to “see that the laws of the State are uniformly and adequately enforced” and to prosecute local offenses if “in the opinion of the Attorney General any law of the State is not being adequately enforced in any county.”
At the other end of the spectrum are states that grant locally elected prosecutors broad autonomy from statewide officials. In Illinois, courts have held that the state attorney general “lacks the power to take exclusive charge of the prosecution of those cases over which the [local] State’s Attorney shares authority.” In Texas, the state’s highest criminal court recently held that “absent the consent and deputization order of a local prosecutor or the request of a district or county attorney for assistance, the Attorney General has no authority to independently prosecute criminal cases in trial courts.”
By giving local prosecutors independent control over state criminal enforcement within their jurisdictions, these states’ laws enable local variation in statewide laws’ on-the-ground effect. In effect, these states give local prosecutors carte blanche to enforce state laws or not as they choose.
Between these extremes, states have made a variety of choices about when, if at all, state-level officials can override local prosecutors’ choices. Ohio’s attorney general can prosecute any case at the governor’s request, while Pennsylvania’s usually can displace a local district attorney only by going to court and proving an “abuse of discretion.” In New York, the governor may direct the state attorney general to prosecute local cases.
These varied state laws don’t track today’s partisan geography: Blanket nonenforcement is lawful in Illinois and Texas and unlawful in Massachusetts and North Carolina. To date, however, these varied laws have had little practical effect. The vogue for nonenforcement has swept cities across the country, while opponents have largely responded with abstract critiques.
In some cases, there are ways of challenging local prosecutors’ nonenforcement policies through the state government or courts. In others, opponents’ only recourse is at the local ballot box.
Mr. Price is a law professor at the University of California, Hastings and author of a forthcoming Georgia Law Review article, “Faithful Execution in the Fifty States.”
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